


Badly Raised Strays

by Rennll



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Animal Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Memories, Dogs, Gen, Post-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27243934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rennll/pseuds/Rennll
Summary: When he was a child Gabriel Reyes raised dogs; when he was an adult he raised soldiers. All of them moody breeds, aggressive and dangerous, and he never learned to keep them from his heart.
Kudos: 2





	Badly Raised Strays

The man who had once been known as Gabriel Reyes had taken care of dogs when he was young. They had all been large, moody, breeds who readily dealt him bite marks that he hid from his parents with long sleeved hoodies, but also extremely loyal, which made them the best friends a boy like him could ask for, never forcing him to prove he was worthy of being part of their gang by scribbling slurs on the school lockers, beating up other kids, or comparing sexual escapades, tall tales that he'd browsed the internet for more than he based them on personal experience.  
The first dog had been the family’s German Shepard, Gemma; the rest were all scrawny things that he bought from flea markets or found rummaging around the trash containers behind malls. His mother didn’t do more than shake her head at him when he brought home number five, as long as he paid for their food himself and never let them into the house. His father didn’t bother complaining either, only took care of them if they ended up bad, because a kid juggling school could not be the perfect sole owner of several demanding dogs, and eventually some started giving him bleeding wounds that could not be covered up by black sleeves. Better they lived with him, in makeshift shelters of tin foil and boards, than being ownerless on the street: Gabriel and the dogs likely shared that opinion, but you couldn’t keep around a hound that lunged for peoples faces.  
Since he was never able to do it himself, his father had been the one to put a muffler on his handgun and head out into the yard. Gabriel would run off into the alleyways where he wouldn’t have to see, bringing one of the other dogs with himself to sob with his face buried into its fur.  
When he told the tale to Jack the other balked, because such a story sounded like it belonged in the America of the previous century, not modern times with well oiled governmental systems and social networks in place to take care of people and their pets. Country boy Jack, who thought everything in a city was bound to be civilized. To be fair, most of it was, and the spots where a boy could raise half a dossin dogs in his backyard without a neighbor calling the police had perhaps gotten smaller, but Gabriel doubted they would ever completely disappear. Wherever people crowded together, places like that became a constant like the blotches of grease on public tables or the dried gum sticking to the underside of park benches.  
The first thing he did after becoming the commander of Blackwatch was beginning to associate the diverse cast of punks he’d gotten under his command with stray pups. Half-rabbid and rude, baring their teeth at every stranger ... The comparisons appeared in his brain whether he wanted to or not. He hated that this became his first creative outlet on the new job; not the devising of a groundbreaking new military strategy or something. Worst of all was that the habit stuck, together with the attached history.  
His reputation as a drill sergeant from hell he could thank his pops and the shoot gun for. Every time he finished a drill and found himself unsatisfied with the results, thinking he had failed to whip his people into proper shape and discipline, the old man would hover like a specter behind the wheezing exhausted recruits and aim at their necks.  
That had been Gabriel Reyes; the Reaper did not talk to anyone about memories, nor did he like being reminded of them, which was why he played with the thought of clawing Sombra’s head off at the moment. She seemed to have predicted he would react this way, and thus abstained from being present in the monitor room with him when all of the screens had spluttered, then began showing the recording of a jail break in full swing. One involving an undoubtedly familiar person.  
There was no mistaking the tacky cowboy aesthetic. Even if Mcree hadn't dressed as if he belonged in the nineteenth century, Reaper still would’ve recognized him on his marksmanship alone. Not many people were able to hit six targets at once within the duration of a second. The images crackled and cut between several surveillance cameras as it followed him down a corridor where he took down both human and robot guards as if they were bowling pins. One did not have to be a genius to realize what kind of institution Mcree was in and what his purpose for being there might be. Why these images showed up on these monitors just as he checked them was the more pressing question.  
While at first he’d bristled, thinking it could have been the actions of an enemy, Sombra’s cackling from the speakers exposed the intrusion as one of the resident hacker’s unamusing pranks. She had made no secret about knowing his former identity, the temptation of casual blackmail being too large, but he could only wonder what she hoped to achieve by showing him the illegal shenanigans that Reyes’ old agent was up to. Did it amuse her to try to coax some sentimentality out of him, or was this a reminder that there was no part of his buried past that she couldn’t dig up from its grave?  
– This is wasting my time, he snarled, turning away, but Sombra started to whine that he had to “Wait just a bit; my favorite part is about to begin”. Experience had taught him that if he did not indulge her the tiniest bit, then every electronic appliance in the whole base would turn against him before the day was done, thus he kept watching, rasping discontentedly in his throat as he did.  
Mcree had reached the cells. The inmates who spotted him were pressing themselves to the glass walls barring them from freedom, their fists banging and their mouths shouting, though he might as well have been deaf, his sights set on one and only one convict, who glowered at him from where she sat in the shadowed back of her small box shaped room.  
It did not surprise Reaper to see that Fowsio, yet another former Blackwatch, was incarcerated. In fact he’d known when it happened. The damned “Identity Protection Program”, put in effect after Overwatch’s disbandment, may have made it near impossible to find information on former members, but only as long as they didn’t plaster their face on the newscast by badly injuring two dussin people in a pub.  
If he wanted to he could have strolled into the prison at any time to kill her and scratch one more name off his list. That he hadn’t yet was a question of pragmatism. Only so many ex-Overwatch could be murdered without the remainders getting skittish and hiding themselves in even tricker places, but Fowsio would be stuck in her cell even when she realized Death had painted a target on her back. Easy picking. Mcree's jail break had not been accounted for.  
Mcree was attaching a black appliance to the electric lock on the cell, an appliance that looked suspiciously like hacking tech from Blackwatch. On the orders of the U.N every last piece of that technology should have been decommissioned, but of course the cowboy would have smuggled some highly useful things with him. Within a minute the lock’s firewalls had been fried and the glass barrier retreated into the floor.  
As soon as she had room to move, Fowsio rushed forward and slammed a muscular leg into Mcree’s head. Sombra whooped, like a sports spectator watching her favorite team strike points.  
– Look at him fly. I would willingly put myself in prison if it meant I could kick people like that when they came to save me. Can you imagine the shock? It’s so unexpected.  
Not if you knew Fowsio personally.  
Once she had been one of Reyes stray puppies — stubborn habits and all that — but the thing about pups was that you might adopt a hyena instead of a dog and not realise it until she became large enough to casually crush the bones of her mates. How many times had he had to put her in arrest because her casual roundhouse kicks fractured the skulls of other agents? Mcree was overall sturdier than most people however, as rugged and tough as a coyote, if he had to use the mutt analogy. The kick sent him to his knees, yet he could still shoot his pistol.  
In retaliation, or so you would think, but the bullet flew past Fowsios hip and struck a guardswoman who had turned up at the end of the corridor and aimed a stun gun. The guard was thrown backwards, hit in the chest where the shot would incapacitate for the moment, but not pierce the protective armor. Mccree had always been too soft, no matter how many times Reyes had told him that he should aim between the eyes whenever he could (He always could).  
The man that was thus too soft and tough at the same time, straightened his hat and stood up to face Fowsio who started shouting furiously, as if to see if she could blow away that same hat by the force of her voice alone. The rant probably revolved around her not wanting anyone to handle her problems for her; don’t expect her to be in his debt — that sort of nonsense. A mercy that the recording had no sound, the only accompaniment to the excessive gesturing on screen being Sombra’s chortles.  
By the relaxed posture Mcree held while Fowsio chewed him out, Reaper could tell that he was smiling a wolf’s grin. While seemingly shying away, backing while she advanced, he was leading her down the path he had been coming from, something she did not seem to notice until one of the people who he’d shoot earlier (Obs. not between the eyes) quickened and grabbed her ankle. She responded by kicking. As the man’s head snapped backward, Sombra cheered. Yes Sombra — that one wasn't even a proper dog like thing; a weasel more like. Slipping through the hands that aimed to grab her, and scheming within her dark burrows. That was probably why everything that came out of her mouth grated on his nerves.  
– Did you see that? I swear, this woman kicks like a horse … Hey, why are you leaving again?  
– I’ve seen enough of this.  
– You know I only found you this recording because I thought you wanted to hunt them. Don’t you wanna know where they ran off to?  
Grumbling, he glanced back to the screen where Mccree seemed to have finally lost his patience, gesturing angrily toward Fowsio’s possibly dead victim. It seemed he had even more qualms about hurting people than before. Judging by her expression, the only way she would agree to follow Mcree out of the prison without breaking any more necks was if he promised her she could shoot him with his own guns afterwards. Emotional fools the both of them, though that wouldn’t stop them from escaping successfully. Together they were more than what any small prison could contain; they had been trained by Reyes after all.  
Reaper observed as they came to some sort of agreement — Mcree handed her his second weapon, so perhaps he really had promised her a duel to the death — and they began sprinting down the hall together. He snorted, a gruff sound from charred windpipes.  
– When you show me a video of Soldier 64 or the Ghost Sniper, then I’ll be interested, he said, before turning from the monitor for the final time.  
He wouldn’t let Sombra pick his targets for him. There was glory in hunting soldiers, but putting down dogs rubbed him the wrong way.


End file.
